Behind the Scenes Minis: Ruby and Japan

Holly and Tracy talk about Ruby Payne-Scott's progressive marriage. They also cover Japan's global connectivity earlier than people may realize.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Homely Fry, and
I'm Tracy B. Wilson. We talked about Ruby Payne Scott
this week. Uh huh, a woman who I sort of love. Yeah,

(00:23):
I will talk about one quote that I did not
include because it used phrasing that I think we both hate, sure,
but I want to mention it here because it's a
good example of how even people who are your allies
can say things that they maybe don't mean to be
so awful but are Oh no, which is that. In

(00:46):
Joan Freeman's biography, she describes Ruby as shrill. Oh I
hate it, I hate it, you would, But she also
says like, but she used that voice to like advocate
for change, and it's like, I see what you're doing,
but I know I wish, Yeah, she would have chosen
any other word again too, that was written many years ago.

(01:07):
I was just gonna ask when it was written, because
I for sure have read things for work that were
written a decade or more ago that I feel like
if the person were writing it today, they would not
have used that language. Yeah, I think she probably wouldn't have,
like I read I don't remember which. I think maybe

(01:28):
it was some of the GK. Chesterton research. There were
people that had a focus on his weight that I
think might No, I won't say it might have been
handled kind of sensitively for the because it wasn't it really,
But like, I really feel like some of the folks
who wrote those things, were they writing them now, would

(01:50):
not they choose different languages? Yeah, I really we didn't
talk a ton about it, but I really really love
pretty much discussion of Ruby and her family, and particularly
Ruby and Bill seemed smitten with each other. And there
are some very fun pictures that I found in one

(02:13):
of the biographies I read, which is called Under the Radar,
and they're pictures of them, like with their bushwalking club
and things that were taken by their bushwalking club. And
there's one particular photograph taken in nineteen forty seven, so
they would have been married a few years at that point,
and they're out in the middle of nowhere and Ruby

(02:34):
is washing Bill's hair and it's the sweetest, most charming
thing to me. It's so like cute, And you know,
anytime you see people who are married taking care of
one another in that way. I find it very charming
and it's so sweet, and they do always seem like

(02:54):
they're just sort of completely gago over each other, which
I love. Yeah. Yeah, we didn't talk about their kids much.
Their kids are still alive, but I will say they
produced a mathematician who's incredibly well respected in their son, Peter.
And there if you have, if any part of you,
if you are an art person, heard the name Fiona

(03:15):
and when is that Fiona Hall, the fairly well known sculptor,
it is that's their daughter. She has done a lot
of amazing art over the years and continues to so.
Like I said, I didn't want to focus on them
too much, but yes, pretty amazing kids from what seemed
to be two pretty amazing parents. When you think about

(03:36):
the fact that Bill was a feminist in the nineteen forties,
that seems pretty amazing. Yeah. They were apparently Ruby also
loved kiddies, which just endears me to her even more.
They always had cats at home. I found myself reading
about her and being floored at every turn. Yeah, because

(03:58):
she was so very outspoken about issues in ways that
we don't really think about happening until like the seventies.
In terms of her being like, no, we need equal
rights and that's gonna happen, and I'm not giving up,
and I'm advising all of my colleagues to not give
up until we get them. And it's like we did

(04:20):
nineteen forty nine. You were doing this right. I also
mentioned that we would talk a little bit about the
Communist Party thing. Yeah, so here is why there's not
much about it. She was suspected to be a member
of the Communist Party for a long time. Well she

(04:43):
must have been, because they gave her that nickname, right,
she was, but there wasn't conclusive evidence and like the
Australian Security Intelligence Organization had a dossier on her. They
thought she was a communist, but there wasn't any direct
evidence that they had initially, and it wasn't until later

(05:05):
when a person who had also been a member of
the Australian Communist Party, which I don't remember the exact
name of it, but was like, oh, yeah, she was
a member for a little while, and it seems like
it was one of those things for her that was
very much in line with her very very leftist politics.
And then as things kind of shifted in the world
in the nineteen fifties, she stopped participating and was no

(05:28):
longer a member. But we don't have much more info
than what I just said, But we really don't. She
didn't seem to record anything about her thoughts on it
or her interest in it. She doesn't seem to have
been super active because it would have been more obvious,
I think, to more people, and the Asia would have

(05:49):
had more concrete information than they did. So it's a
little bit It's one of those strange things that comes
up a lot where it's like she was a Communist
and it's like, yeah, yes, but was she like was
she practicing This sounds like when you were talking about someone
lapsing as a religious follower, but she seems to not

(06:10):
have been doubled down into it by any means, right. Well, So,
one of the things that we've talked about related to
like the United States labor movement UH and like the
civil rights movement in the United States, is that like
a lot of these movements had a lot of ideas
in common with the Communist Party about like equality and workers'

(06:31):
rights and all of that. And my understanding of communism
in Australia specifically, especially in like around the nineteen forties,
ish was like really strong connections to the labor movement
and to organized labor and to like anti fascisms as

(06:57):
fascism started to grow in parts of the world. And
so I think it's a lot of people immediately start
to think about like the Soviet Union and Soviet politics
and things like that, and it's like there were some
other nuances vrolled and so if somebody's outlook was like
very very pro trade union and pro equal rights and

(07:20):
pro economic equality, it's it's not all of that all
that surprising, No, it completely trapped been. Yeah. Yeah, I
did see in a brief mention in the New York
Times where they did that thing that they do obituaries
for people that never got oh yeah, obituaries. There was

(07:41):
a reference to an interview that I never found mentioned
anywhere else where. Her daughter said that even after she
had retired from her last job, she lived a pretty
quiet life, but she did go out and protest the
Vietnam War, which also tracks. But I didn't find any
other information about it. So that's another thing that I

(08:04):
didn't really feel like merited inclusion, because we couldn't substantiate
it in any kind of way, what an interesting woman. Yeah,
who you know, did a lot for science, did a
lot for women's rights without realizing it. I mean, I'm
sure she realized it, but like sure, I don't think
the women's rights movement really recognized her as an important

(08:27):
figure until much later. I still just love that she's like,
I'm on a ladder, you ding dong? Do you really
want to yeah? On skirts up there? Like she seems
like just so completely direct in all of this. I
love that she was like, no, I don't really think
I need to give you the date of my wedding.

(08:47):
I don't think you need that information, right. I just
love how it's just a little firecracker and also very smart,
and even people that thought they didn't like her were like, man,
she's a really good scientist. Yeah. There are a couple
of notes of people in some of her biographies, particularly
that longer one I mentioned earlier, where it is like, well,
we track down this colleague who said he really didn't

(09:09):
like her, but he really really respected her. It's like, yeah,
all right, then, yeah, I guess that's all you need.
Ruby Payne Scott. I also kind of accidentally timed this
so that it would come out right. I think it's
gonna end up being right before her birth date, and
the date of her death is also right right up

(09:30):
against her birth date by a little bit. So end
of May should just be Ruby Payint Scott Bestival in
my heart. Yeah, there you go. This week on the show,
we talked about has Chorist Nanaga and UH delegation from

(09:55):
Japan to North America and you Europe at a time
when sometimes it may seem to folks that the world
was not as interconnected as it really was. That is
something that we UH talked about a lot in an
interview that we did that with Dennis Carr. We mentioned

(10:17):
that interview at the beginning of this episode. It was
in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston that was all about this Manila Galleon trade and
how the Manili, the Manila Galleon trade like influenced life
in the colonies, life in Europe, art, all of that
kind of stuff, and so like, we had already talked

(10:37):
some about the world being like globally connected at that
point in history when folks might not imagine that that
was the case. But I thought it was really interesting
to look at how Japan was more internationally connected than
folks might imagine if what they think of in term

(11:00):
of Japan becoming globally connected starts with Matthew Perry in
the nineteenth century. Yeah, I mean, I think that's it
exactly right. That is such a long period of their
isolationism that it and it's kind of been told that
way at various points. Yeah, as well. It's like Japan
was cut off from everyone until Matthew Perry writer, It's

(11:22):
like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no. This
the things that we talked about in this episode also
makes it clear that this was not like a light
switch that was thrown and suddenly Japan's borders were shut down.
That it was sort of a process that took place
over a period of time, and that the century or

(11:45):
more leading up to the borders being totally closed, like
had a lot of conflict going on, Like Japan's concerns
about whether Spain would basically conquer Japan based on what
we know of Spain in this seventeenth century, like those

(12:10):
were valid, Like they could see what had you know,
they could see that Spain had basically taken over the Philippines,
They had you know, heard from people in New Spain,
like what was happening to you know, the indigenous people
that were they were not living in like total a
total vacuum, So like concerns about what a deeper relationship

(12:34):
with Spain would mean, Like those were really valid concerns,
but also terrifying and violent time to be a Christian
living in Japan. And there were people who continued to
be Christian in practice Christianity in Japan after that that
had to do it in like total secrecy. One thing

(12:56):
that I said to Holly while working on this is
that I resolved that when this episode was done, the
next thing I was going to work on would be
something that just did not have an outline, that was
full of may have and possibly and this is a
little bit unclear, because these three episodes, not totally right
in a row, but very close together, have all been

(13:18):
very challenging just due to a lack of clear information
and resources about Mary Dyer and Nichelina watier Uh and
Husk Grosun and Naga. Yeah, I don't know. I sometimes
love those mystery ones because you can go here are
the three options, and you can kind of to reference
another recent one Okham's razor it a little bit and

(13:39):
be like, well, yeah, sure, really one of these seems
the most likely and involves the least supposition. Yeah. I
do want to point out too that I think, probably
in addition to thinking Japan was closed off forever until
the Perry expedition, I also suspect that many people, and

(13:59):
for me, I didn't realize this until I was well
into adulthood, that Christianity was already in Japan, well before
I would have guessed. Yeah, right, Like, the idea of
Christians being persecuted in Japan before the nineteenth century is
not something I think most people realize, at least certainly
not in my age group, because there's a lot of

(14:26):
a lot of very slanted accounts that suggest that, you know,
when European and American colonists started traveling beyond North America
into your other place, right, they brought Christianity with them.
And it's like, no, the beaten to the punch on
that one, guys. Yeah, I had on my short list

(14:48):
for a really, really long time. The Mass Crucifixion that
we talked about briefly in this episode, where the sam
Fella Bay incident had happened, and a group of Christians
was like rounded up and tortured and crucified like that
was horrifying. And I was having sort of the same

(15:09):
mental process when I heard about this happening, which was
that I did not even know that there were any
Christians in Japan at the time that that happened, Like
that I had really only heard about any of that
relating to like the nineteenth century and beyond, and finding
enough specific information about it and to make it a

(15:29):
whole episode was really challenging. And it was one of
those things where there was one specific book and one
specific library and I was like, maybe if I get
that book, I can do it. And I went and
got that book, which turned out to be a source
that was used on this episode, and I very quickly
was like, even with this book, don't I don't have

(15:50):
what I need. So it had just been sort of
lingering and I'm glad doesn't feel like the right word
because it is such a horrifying incident's talk about, but
like winding up finding a different topic that was related
to it where there could at least be mentioned of it. Yeah,
I appreciated. On a lighter note, Yeah, the way we

(16:28):
talked about and and you found in your research that
there are a lot of different takes on how the
delegation the embassy as it were, was portrayed. Made me
think about networks doing upfronts. Yeah, no, these guys are
gonna probably maybe be great leaders in Japan. It's kind

(16:50):
of like the way you announce stuff that you're hoping
you can get being done. You can get some ad
funding for Yeah. If you're not familiar with the term upfronts,
this is an event where like networks or podcast companies
or et cetera are doing presentations with the hope of

(17:12):
getting advertising commitments. Right, Like you'll see them referenced in
like any kind of entertainment press all the time, where
it's like, you know, NBC's upfronts, Disney's upfronts, blah blah blah.
We are they announced their projected roster for the next year, right,
and we do them for podcasting as well, like every
every big media thing that runs on advertising pretty much

(17:35):
does it. But it is often like you are. It's
it's not the intention isn't even to be shady, but
like sometimes you announce things that are in development that
may or may not come to fruition. This gets me
on a soapbox about various fandoms and how they're like,
but you said this is happening. It's like, well, it's planned.

(17:55):
Doesn't always mean that plans get through to the end,
but yeah, it's it's a thing where it's like, here's
what's gonna happen, here's what we're looking forward to in
our next year. And they don't always they don't always happen,
but in this case, it feels like maybe it was
a little more intentionally cloudy in the representation what was

(18:18):
going on. Yeah, based on the way that people writing
in English wrote about this, I really thought that there
was just like nothing to go on. And it was
fairly late in my research when I found a paper
written in English by a scholar writing in English who
had clearly been in Japan and done a lot of

(18:39):
research in Japan, and had this long list of Japanese
language sources, and I was like, WHOA, I did not
know any of these even existed, And so I start
putting them all into WorldCat and it's like most of
them just aren't aren't in libraries here, and like two

(18:59):
or three of them there's like, oh, I I could
Inner library loan this book in Japanese from Yale Great,
and then and then try to find a Japanese speaker
more proficient than my spouse, because while I can get
some help with Japanese things from my spouse, like I think, yes,

(19:21):
be a lot. And I was like, I'm just I'm
gonna have to go with the information that is available
on this in English, which is one of the challenges
of doing this show. Like we get a lot of
requests from folks who are like, I wish you would
talk about the history of place more like fill in
the blank, And a lot of times it's like, we

(19:43):
also wish we could do more on the history of
that place, but like a lot of the information about
that place is contained within that place, in the languages
spoken in that place, and is not accessible to us
living in the United State dates even if we did
have translators on staff in some cases, like the book

(20:06):
itself is not here. Yeah. By the way, I worry
that when you say on staff, people will think we
have a staff. No, we don't have a staff. And
I got asked once how many, like recently by someone
else who works in podcasting, how many people were on
our staff, and I probably came off as rude, but
I just started laughing maniacally. Yeah, it was like me

(20:26):
and Tracy. Yeah, sometimes when I am you know, in
uh cab or whatever, Like I'm somewhere where I'm having
a conversation with a random person and they ask what
do you do? And then they ask for more detail,
and I'm like, well, Holly and I research and write
every episode and we record it. Our producer Casey does

(20:48):
the audio editing on it. Sometimes we have one of
the other producers will do the audio edit if Casey's
not available for some reason. But like the really the
the research and the writing and all of that is
Holly and me, And there sometimes will be a paw
and then that sounds like a lot. It's like, yes,
it is a lot, and when you add it, it's
a lot. And all the resources on the thing are

(21:11):
in another country, in another language. Like it is a
way higher bar to putting out a new episode from
each of us every week. Yeah, just to get the basics.
So anyway, Happy Friday, whatever's happening on your weekend. I
hope it's great. We'll be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow.

(21:33):
We'll be back on Monday with a brand new episode.
And we hope everybody has a great, great weekend. And
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(21:57):
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